Montreal may be Canada’s indie rock focal point, but it’s easy to forget that some 2,300 miles away, Vancouver is delivering one buzzworthy band after another as well. Recent hot acts include Pink Mountaintops, the Organ, Said the Whale and Ladyhawk (not to thumb a nose at a little group called the New Pornographers). Now we get a quintet called the Clips. Their debut LP, Matterhorn, is getting a re-release from Unfamiliar Records, exposing them to a wider audience and what could only be described as “pockets of praise.” Led by vocalist/keyboardist Edo Van Breemen, they package tight-knit, fluttering percussion with striking webs of keyboard-driven arrangements. The best comparison is also the most obvious—it’s a Radiohead-familiar band that skipped the Brits’ formative years so they could plunge straight into the Ok Computer/Kid A mentality with a dance rock edge.
First up is the lengthy “Wire.” The splashy typewriter drums that start us off are the stuff of cocaine-binging free jazz, but the singing comes on as languid and deliberate as Thom Yorke. After that, we’re thrown into the Clips’ hook-heavy mode. “Eyesuck” is stuffed with jerky keyboard and drum percolators and outlandish vocal lines: the not-so-delicate art of sucking eyes, natch. Catchy but safety-unreliable, it’s a melodic track always unsettled with nervous tics. Then comes “Space Kidz,” an itchy geek dance anthem if there ever was one. Arguably the most accessible of the bunch, it shows that the Clips are equally familiar with feverish, hook-laden pop songs as they are with tinny outer space jazz rock.
Matterhorn bogs down a bit during its sagging mid-section. Keys plucked from the palette of a Viennese harpsichord join a rum-pa-pum drum march on “Missing the Plan.” The six-and-a-half minute track takes detours along the way, including chanting vocal taunts and a fiery electric guitar workout, but never really coalesces to find a memorable melody. And “Abalone” is something of a slovenly, piano-drenched Radiohead dream; pretty but unmemorable. And the delicacy of the early twinkle gets overrun with too many extraneous sonic additives by the home stretch. The musicians flatten out every trick on these two numbers, but they’re moments to admire, not enjoy. Conversely, “Enrique Mcteeth” runs almost seven minutes and locks the listener in to a hypnotic gradual build that climaxes in a way both exhilarating and unexpected.
But they right the ship for the finish. “Kassel” and “2nd Hand Deal” are among the finest moments on the disc. The former is an electrifying long run; boogying keyboards engage the jogging rhythm as the band tries out a dozen different tricks along the way. They weave in and out of so many capricious signature switches that it’s nearly impossible to get a firm grasp of where the song’s heading. At their best, you’re never comfortable while listening to the Clips (at least not until you memorize the songs)—that edge-of-the-seat volatility may very well be their greatest asset. As for the more compact “2nd Hand Deal,” it’s a spry instrumental built on a frenetic beat. Think of it as a dance song for spastic tech-noids.
It’s probably a good thing that the Clips can make their instruments speak so fluently since the lyrics don’t say much of anything. They’re usually of the “precious-cryptic” variety—possible to take the meaning a dozen different ways, but not in an obnoxious random pattern that bloats the singer’s ego. And since Van Breemen delivers them alternately with freeform indifference and thoughtful rumination, it’s ensured that almost anything that makes no sense can still be an easy pill to swallow. He can bring the croon, the falsetto, the cozy drawl and the “champion champagne” with equal skill. A few songs are built on his vocal pattern, others treat it as background noise or a superfluous instrument, some don’t bother with it at all.
Some might lament the unexplored arena of hypnotic dreamscapes that the Clips brush over without bothering. “Abalone” and the end of “Eyesuck” come close, but a lesser track and a song fragment aren’t enough. Even the slower numbers are so rhythmically tense that you feel like they could snap at any minute. But they only dabble in the ponderous stuff; maybe they’re too Devo to give it a second thought. And yet variety would have given the frantic cuts more sweaty potency. I might never have felt secure under the Clips’ hypnotic spell, but finding a relaxing passage to soothe my nerves would have made the next erratic attack all the more deliciously jarring.
Instrumental interplay and irregular arrangements are the Clips’ bread and butter. But like most solid debuts, Matterhorn is more about promise than execution. They have greatness in them, and this effort certainly finds them playing to their strengths, but there’s not quite enough here to make them as exciting as they ought to be. Repeated listens just enhance the head-cluttering rhythms, but also undress the weaker moments all the more. The Clips is an appropriate name for the outfit that delivered Matterhorn. Digital scissor cuts could improve the album dramatically, but snippets throughout are as compulsively engaging and vivacious as anything else released this year.
"Matterhorn" is on sale August 12, 2008 from Unfamiliar.
